Lookaway, Lookaway (3 page)

UNC owes its existence to something called the “escheat,” which means that when someone died intestate or without a surviving heir, their property, including slaves, went to the university. UNC would auction off all the human property and thereby fund itself.
8
Funding the university with, say, a tax would likely fail before the historically cheapskate North Carolina voter, so the escheat remained in place. This is out of Kemp Battle’s
History of the University of North Carolina, 1776–1799
, which shows how it worked:

A free negro had a daughter, the slave of another. He [the free negro] bought her, and she then became the mother of a boy. The woman’s father died without kin and intestate. His child and grandchild became the property of the university. They were ordered to be sold. This sounds hard, but it was proved to the board that they were in the lowest stage of poverty and degradation and that it would redound to their happiness to have a master. It must be remembered that slaves were considered to be as a rule in better condition than free negroes.
9

That was probably the most-beloved president of our university soft-pedaling human trafficking for UNC’s gain—and he wrote that as late as 1907.

There is no one, particularly local historians, who will say a word against this sanctified place.

*   *   *

Joey D had spent the morning rummaging through boxes in the basement of Zeta Pi house, even making a trip to the aluminum shed with the outdoor party items. He hadn’t bothered to dress; he wore what he slept in, T-shirt and boxer shorts. Now he was attacking the boxes under the first-floor stairs. “Where’s the damn slave auction stuff?” he finally yelled, within earshot of Frank.

“I think the last president threw that shit away,” Frank said, hoping to discourage the search.

“How we gonna have a slave auction without the woolly wigs and the chains?”

Skip Baylor, sophomore, naturally pink faced and, when drunk or excited, an alarming lobster red, cried out, “Slave auction? Great!” Skip had heard about the slave auctions of other houses. You bid on a sorority sister, and if you won, you owned her, she had to do what you say! (At minimum, a hand job.) But it could be more exciting the other way around, when they bought you. Two or three Skank sisters making you take off your clothes and service them, and all you could say was
Yes, mistress,
and
Whatever you say, mistress
.

Indignantly hurling broken toys and props to the back of the under-the-stair space, Joey D muttered, “Spears and shields and all the African stuff, Frank. Shoe polish for the guy who goes all in.”

“Listen good. We are not having a slave auction, and if we do, then we’ll go with Romans and Toga Night and there’ll be no racial element. That’s the sort of thing that goes national, one Polaroid gets found by the local media and it’s on CNN. Speaking of that. We need to all watch a video sent by the Zeta Pi alumni board, okay, Joey? Now’s as good a time as any.”

“I saw it last year.”

“I honestly doubt that, since I got it today.” Frank was determined not to be Southern-nice and passive before Joey D’s mocking up-North assertiveness. Why did he come down South at all? With all the suspensions and flunkings-out from northern schools, what was he by now—twenty-four? Frank had heard about Colgate (an incident involving a blow-up sex doll and the steeple of Colgate Chapel) and then a graffiti incident at Brown (the red spray paint—
ALPHAS ARE PUSSYS
—did not wash off the white Vermont marble of the Hay Library evenly, and led to a sandblasting of the entire façade) and, unwelcome at the private academies, Joey D went next to Florida.

At Florida, as activities officer for the Zeta Pi chapter there, Joey D was the mastermind of Blob Night, which involved the importation of a giant parade-balloon-sized blob which was inflated alongside the pool. The object, Joey D explained, was to jump from the third-story window of the frat house and into the blob, which would propel whoever was sitting on the other side high into the air and, ostensibly, into the pool. Joey D demonstrated, sending his drunken, loose-as-a-ragdoll roommate up ten feet and down into the pool. Then Joey moved to the bounce position and another guy shot him up even higher where, in midair, he opened and chugged an entire Red Bull before hitting the water. Now that was the gold standard. Soon it became irresistible to see what would happen when Moose (320-pound rugby guy) jumped from the third story and bounced Micro (his name was Michael, but at five-two he was the smallest of the brothers). Micro sprawled upon the blob with a Red Bull in his hand, ready for launch; Moose tried to wedge himself out the window … what happened next varies from what you read about it online, but what was undeniable was that Moose hit the center of the blob rather than the operative side, which flung Micro the wrong direction two stories up, smack into the brick wall of the house; having broken his nose and his right pinky finger, he fell back on top of Moose, audibly breaking Moose’s arm and breaking his jaw (with the still-clutched Red Bull can) … then they bounced together up and over the blob onto the pavement around the pool, with Moose landing wrong, breaking the arm in a second place, and Micro hitting the metal arm of a deck chair with his chin and, for all appearances, having broken his neck.

“It was like something out of a Road Runner cartoon,” Joey D once explained, still amazed by the Newtonian physics of it.

Despite the groans and blood and abundant injury, no one called 911 but rather picked up and moved the boys inside to a couch until there would be a discussion about what would be done next, whether an ambulance was necessary, whether it might be best to make a discreet drop-off at an emergency room in Gainesville and quickly drive away. Which was the course of action decided upon and, later, punished by the university administration, getting the chapter on probation.

Frank might have thought Joey D had gotten the message, but later that night, over a kegger and Linkin Park blasting at high decibels until the police were called, he overheard Joey D sharing the Hell Night plans with Cory and Kevin: pledges have to walk up all the flights of stairs of Zipperhaus with a brick tied around their testicles—he read about that somewhere!

“Joey,” Frank said, shadowing him, “I would appreciate being able to have a Hell Week where the imprint of our pledges’ balls or spread ass cheeks are not emblazoned on my mind for eternity. Did you watch that video?”

The Zeta Pi home office annually sent out to the 126 houses around the country the same safety video, the video that warned of hazing rituals—

“Fuck all that,” Joey D said. “It’s time for Shelly! Shell-laaaayyyy.”

The other guys were led by Skip, too drunk to enunciate but not too drunk to chant: “Shell-lay, Shell-lay, Shell-lay…”

Frank shook his head, so vigorously his beer spilled from the plastic cup he was holding. “Guys, I am sure Shelly is dead.”

“Bullshit Shelly is dead!”

Alec chimed in: “She’s in some meat aisle at Food Lion.”

Alec’s roommate Eric: “Yeah, when Jim graduated, that was it for Shelly. His dad wouldn’t let us use her anymore.”

Joey D was truly exercised. “No more Society of Ram and Ewe?” Pronounced
Rammin’ You
, invariably. “Ladies, it’s not Hell Week at Carolina without Shelly! We’re not Zippermen without Shelly!”

The next morning, Frank rousted Joey D out of bed at ten
A.M.
Frank looked away as a naked Joey D with his morning erection hopped out of bed. “Eh? Say hi to Frank, Little Joey…” Frank by now had seen Joey D’s penis more times than that of his own brother, with whom he shared a bedroom for sixteen years. More times than could be counted, he had seen Joey D grab his penis and squeeze the end so it looked like it was talking. Little Joey extolled the virtues of sexual congress with Maribelle McClintock, before bemoaning all the fags and pussies at Zeta Pi who didn’t know how to conduct a Hell Week, concluding, “Hey Little Joey, big gay Frank is looking at you … Oh noooo, Big Joey … Thanks a lot, Frank, you made me lose my erection.”

“I have to call the chapter and give my word that the committee watched their video. See you in the Dungeon in five, okay?”

The video, circa 1997, with dated hairstyles and goatees and one-day stubbles, was hosted by Kip Donnelly, some pretty boy who was on a three-season WB Network nighttime soap set in Orange County. Kip was a Kappa Sigma at USC and tried to be, you know, totally L.A. cool-like, talking seriously for a minute about Hell Weeks and misadventures with pledges.
So you see, guys,
he was saying,
I was a pledge once too …

“The only pledge you ever made was to tongue my hole,” yelled Joey D, now in his boxers, falling into a weather-beaten stuffed chair and popping a beer, 10:17
A.M.
“He’s got more makeup on than my alcoholic stepmom on her way to church!”

There is no initiation,
said Kip,
worth risking someone’s health or someone’s life.

Joey D: “I got your initiation right between my legs, Kippiepoo!”

Alcohol poisoning,
Kip intoned,
is the number one Hell Week misadventure.
Phi Kappa Tau at Rider University was not only ruined by criminal charges and lawsuits, but the dean of students had to face charges as well when a pledge died with .4 alcohol in his body. Many chapters get in trouble for forcing the pledges, who are not twenty-one years of age, to drink alcohol.

“I know what you want to drink, Kippie—my steamin’ cream!”

Frank: “Joey, shut up and listen, willya?”

A student at Indiana University, after drinking heavily during Hell Week, fell and fractured his skull and no one got him help for days. Kip reported that two days after being admitted to a hospital he passed into an irreversible coma and was taken off life support.

“Awww, Kip, Kip, look how sad you are: one less rod for you to suck!”

There have been alcohol-poisoning pledge-related hospitalizations in the last few years at the University of Illinois, Ohio State, the University of Nebraska.
In between Kip’s narrative, faded high school–era photos of the lost boys dissolved on and off the screen. Pledgemaster Joey D looked to the ceiling while the others on the pledge committee looked at Joey D; as each tragic occurrence was related, they checked to see if any of it registered. At Kip’s own Kappa Sigma at USC, a pledge choking to death on the raw meat he was forced to eat. A frat at Stetson University shocking pledges with electrical devices. An Ohio State frat feeding their pledges nothing but salty snacks for days, locking them in a dark closet with nothing but plastic cups so they could collect their own urine if they were thirsty …

“That’s freakin’ brilliant,” Joey D marveled.

“We’re not doing anything remotely scatological this year,” Frank announced. And since Joey D looked puzzled by the word, Frank clarified: “Nothing to do with piss or shit.”

Grayson: “Or naked guys, or guys in wet underwear. That’s just gay.”

Skip: “No vomiting. We just have to clean it up.”

Joey D stood up. He’d seen enough of the “anti-frat propaganda.” He crushed the beer can, belched loudly and flung the can behind the TV set.

Later he pulled his fellow pledge committee members aside, Skip and Justin. There was a way to bring Shelly back from the dead.

*   *   *

Lightning struck. The planets must have moved into single file. Surely all the zodiacal signs scurried into their right moons—or however that stuff worked. After Pref Night, Jerilyn had two matches: Theta Kappa Theta and, stupefyingly, Sigma Kappa Nu!

“Oh my God,” screamed Becca as the slow opening of the bid envelope took place in the dorm room, Jerilyn scarcely able to complete the physical act with her shaking hands. “I mean, that’s the wild one, right? Drugs, booze, and boys!”

“Well, my mom was in Theta…” But this little pretense of weighing her options was too exhausting to finish. Of course she would move heaven and earth to make herself agreeable to Sigma Kappa Nu. Phone calls to Bethany and Mallory revealed they were making their peace with their second and third choices, having to separate, not getting interest from the same house. They screamed in delight for her when she told them: “My God, Jerilyn Johnston is a Skank!” (Well, that’s what even they called themselves at
Σ
KN, tongue in cheek.)

She knew the night would be a glorious celebration, and so, dead tired, dragged out from a week of death-by-shmoozing, she lay down for an afternoon nap. She skipped ENG 101 yet again. But what a coup! She had only wanted to see inside Sigma Kappa Nu when she crossed the street from Theta. She was thinking of it like a Farewell Tour: here, Jerilyn, is where the future rich and powerful frolic, here is the place you’ll never be … She stood before the
Σ
KN chapter house, three stories with a grand columned porch, azaleas and two giant magnolias, all menaced by a muddy construction project, the dug-up yard, and a terrible sewage smell.

“Don’t run away!” It was Layla Throckmorton from Mecklenburg Country Day. Despite a long painful acquaintance, Jerilyn was still a little surprised super-popular Layla remembered her. “Hoo, I know it smells like manure every-damn-where. This work was supposed to be finished the first of August.” Layla was threading a careful path on flagstones through red-clay mud to reach her. “I’m on the New Members Committee,” she said, breathless. “Long story short—we all are this close to probation if we don’t get our GPA up. And then I was looking out the front door and I saw you and I went, hold everything, maybe we can get our hands on Jerilyn Johnston, brainiac!”

Jerilyn had thought it was wrong, back in high school. Layla, a confident senior to her terrified junior, expected Jerilyn to just hand it over, their homework, last night’s chemistry or social studies take-home. Jerilyn had castigated herself for how weak she was to let her cheat, someone who had it all, really, who was smart enough to study but didn’t, just rode around in rich boys’ sports cars and always dressed in casual designer-labeled clothes, oh and she always smelled so nice.